But keeps radioactive bacteria around to ward off cancer.

Share this story

An antibiotic that also helps prevent stupidity. Alternatively, one of the most useful side effects of a drug that I've ever heard of. There's an antibiotic called minocycline, which is a close chemical relative of the more commonly prescribed tetracycline. But recently, some researchers discovered it has an intriguing off-label effect: the drug can "improve symptoms of psychiatric disorders and ... facilitate sober decision-making in healthy human subjects." To get a better grip on this effect, some researchers turned to a classic example of human stupidity, the "honey trap." In this case, rather than honey, the trap was baited with an attractive female, because "Males tend to cooperate with physically attractive females without careful evaluation of their trustworthiness."

Given photos from a panel of females who had already decided to exploit their partners, the men were asked to rate the photos' attractiveness and to decide whether they'd trust the woman as a partner. As expected, the decision to trust a woman became more common as the attractiveness rating went up. But the effect completely vanished if the men were given minocycline first.

Killing cancer with a radioactive bacterial infection. There's an unexpected bit of logic behind the approach in this study. The immune system normally helps keep cancer in check, and many tumors only survive because they evolve the ability to tone down an immune response. So, the people behind this study reasoned a tumor and the cells around it should be susceptible to infection by a weakened bacterial strain that the body usually clears with ease.

The problem is that the bacteria were so weak, they didn't actually kill the tumor cells. To solve this, the authors just loaded the bacteria up with a radioactive isotope. That did the trick. When the bacteria invaded the tumor, they brought a radioactive payload with them, one that killed off the tumor cells (and, in all probability, the bacteria themselves).

Teen pregnancy, a health risk that comes from having obese peers. The authors of this one lay out a potentially confusing situation right in the first sentence: "In the United States, adolescent obesity reduces young women's odds of forming romantic and sexual partnerships but increases the likelihood of risky sexual behavior when partnerships occur." So, which ends up predominating? On average, it turns out that obesity lowers a girl's risk of getting pregnant. But the greater the rate of obesity at the girl's school, then the higher the risk becomes. So, if the US obesity epidemic continues unabated, it's possible that one side effect could be an increase in teen pregnancy.

The evolution of laughter: tickling came first. This is something we here on the Weird Science beat were not previously aware of: other primates tickle each other and respond with laughter, suggesting that the behavior has deep roots as a form of social bonding. (Even though tickling came first, it's more complex from an auditory perspective.) The more complicated forms of laughter, like reacting to a good joke or taunting someone, were presumably modifications of this original expression. People have now been put in an MRI tube and their brain activity tracked while they're listening to laughter. The results show that there's a common neural circuit engaged for all laughter, but the two different types then feed into distinct areas of the brain.

Perhaps running for the bathroom can be hazardous to your health. The loss of strength in bones, including osteoporosis, is a significant health problem for older women. Some researchers figured that a commonly used treatment might make matters worse: laxatives. Since these keep things moving through the digestive tract rapidly, they might give their users less of a chance to absorb dietary calcium. And, looking at the data from the Women's Health Initiative, things looked promising at first: women who used laxatives had a significantly higher number of falls. But it turns out they didn't break bones any more often than the non-users. So it's a nice idea, but now they might want to try to figure out why these women fell more often.